8 MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION 



In His mercy He promised to our sinning 

 parents that their offspring should bruise the 

 serpent's head. 



To preserve and train a people who should pre- 

 serve the memory of this promise, and whose high 

 destiny it should be to give birth to the Deliverer, 

 He called Abraham out of the land of idolatry and 

 made of him a nation. That nation became His 

 chosen people, and He secured their continuance 

 through all the vicissitudes of many ages until the 

 time was ripe for the coming of Messiah. 



It would be hard to understand the history of the 

 Jewish people if it were not that we could see, 

 throughout all of their strange and eventful career, 

 the gradual development of the good purposes of 

 God. 



Among this people were preserved the doctrine of 

 the unity of the Deity, as opposed to the Panthe- 

 ism and idolatry of surrounding nations — a moral 

 code infinitely beyond that of other people — signifi- 

 cant religious rites, which pointed on to a sequel in 

 the future — a succession of authorized religious 

 teachers — and inspired records containing a revela- 

 tion of the attributes and. the purposes of the Deity. 



If we consider the older Dispensation to have 

 ended abruptly and to have had no connection with 

 the establishment of the Christian Church, and the 

 Christian Church to have begun as something 

 entirely new, we will utterly misapprehend the 



